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Rascal News

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Independent, Worker-Owned TTRPG Journalism | Subscribe to us at rascal.news

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Rascal News @rascal.news · 18h

You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to the AI board game startup www.rascal.news/you-do-not-u...

Rascal News @rascal.news · 01/10/2026

Lumberjills is a joyful homage to the Women’s Timber Corps in WW2 www.rascal.news/lumberjills-...

Lumberjills is a joyful homage to the Women’s Timber Corps in WW2

Rascal News @rascal.news · 28/09/2026

Whoa-ho, a bunch of gorgeous copies of our second annual anthology just arrived at Chase's home. One could arrive at yours, too, by purchasing Rascal Year Two from Heart of the Deernicorn's webstore: heartofthedeernicorn.com/product/rasc... (A limited second printing of Year One is also available!)

Five books splayed out on a wooden table, four of which have a snowy illustration of a massive possum. The title reads "RASCAL".

Rascal News @rascal.news · 28/09/2026

Reading Club: Eberron www.rascal.news/reading-club...

Reading Club: Eberron

Rascal News @rascal.news · 25/09/2026

UK Games Expo bans AI-generated work via a new policy www.rascal.news/uk-games-exp...

A crowd of participants entering the UK Games Expo convention.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 24/09/2026

Years-late RPG adventure project embraces AI, is forced to refund angry backers www.rascal.news/years-late-r...

Years-late RPG adventure project embraces AI, is forced to refund angry backers

Rascal News @rascal.news · 18/09/2026

Dice Exploder’s Sam Dunnewold is running out of things to say about RPGs www.rascal.news/dice-explode...

Rascal News @rascal.news · 17/09/2026

2 Good 2 Society: Storybrewers do a lot with small changes in the new edition of the beloved Austen-like www.rascal.news/2-good-2-soc...

good society first edition book with an arrow pointing towards the new pastel boxed set featuring a typical regency setting image

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

Finally, Seraphina's essay about Fight Truck, a larp about fighting people in the back of a moving truck, made everyone cry and so we had to include it. We're very proud to have it be the first contributor essay we include.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

Lin has written a lot about the Mothership megagame, Over/Under, and we wanted to include their meditation on the heavy emotional bleed that flowed out of that experience.

Over/Under was, depending on whether you were involved or not, either the RPG highlight of 2025, or something that elicits a slightly confused shrug. Sam Sorenson’s Discord-based Mothership megagame turned into something nobody expected, morphing into an intensely immersive roleplaying experience. Lin participated in the game, and has documented it extensively on the site, but this piece doesn’t focus on their experiences, instead speaking to several players about the emotional bleed they encountered over the course of the month-long game.

It's a fascinating exploration of the positive and negative aspects of becoming so involved in a game that the line between player and character blur, and how the lack of safeguarding due to the unexpected response to the game enabled both its highs and lows.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Thirty Days of Bleed. The cover photo is fan art from the campaign showing an older man grieving next to a coffin.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

Next, we have Thomas combining a preview of Realis with an art history of Surrealism into a lyrical long read.

Thomas’ facility with language is never more on display than in this piece; a combination of critical analysis of a text, a historic dive into an oft-overused and misunderstood art form, and a mimetic exploration of the relationships between games and other media. Realis is a text well chosen for this sort of deep dive into history and inspiration, and as Thomas peels away the layers of the Surrealist movement of the 1800s, its cultural impact and how the work of the artists, writers, and critics of the era have trickled down to Austin Walker’s work. Realis is itself a surrealist text, both in its form (a tabletop roleplaying game; by its very nature a book that is only complete once you play the game enclosed within its covers) and its presentation (Walker goes out of his way to frame Realis as a text in translation) and Thomas’ analysis ties Realis back to the surrealists’ point of view on play, showcasing the game as a longstanding dialogue between past, present, and future.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: In Realis, Surreal is the New Real. The cover photo is artistic painting of a moon in different shades of blue.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

Chase writes about Letters to Sandra, a solo game about friendship, trust, and, yes, letters.

This is a short, poignant piece about a small game that you probably haven’t played or even heard about. It is Chase’s documentation of his experience playing a solo game called Letters to Sandra. It’s introspective and thoughtful — quiet in a way that we don’t really associate with games. One of the best parts of being at Rascal is that we can write about the less traditional, weirder, or just more whimsical side of the hobby without having to justify it through clicks, likes, or whatever new metric the internet invents tomorrow. I’m glad that at least one of these made it into this book.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Am I a terrible friend? And other thoughts while playing letters to Sandra. The cover photo is envelopes and the book, the author's play materials.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

Then, we have Caelyn's gleeful review of Girl Frame and the mechsploitation genre, as noted by Lin in their introduction.

TTRPGs’ relationship to the mecha genre has been much appreciated by many of its admirers. But it’s a crowded playing field, and that makes it difficult to stand out. What Caelyn makes absolutely clear in this piece is that Girl Frame is playing with mecha expectations and rendering them through a queer and trans lens, using the much newer conventions of mechsploitation to talk about control, gender, and compulsion. Caelyn’s own reflections of her relationship to being transgender deepen this piece, and the acrid stench of a mech’s burning fuel on an ill-kept tarmac suddenly smells like oiled leather, sweat, and sex. The piece cannot be separated from queerness, and, likewise, the article’s own navel-gazing makes the whole thing vibrate like a loose chassis on a freeway. Combining play reporting, interviews, and a very bloody reflection of self and character, this piece is one of the best pieces of queer writing we have ever published — no mean feat.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Girl Frame confidently stomps its way into a niche mecha genre. The cover photo is a woman in a cybersuit framed in front of a mech.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 16/09/2026

We kick off the slipstream portion with Thomas' anti-review of Impossible Landscapes, which comes with theatrical interludes. Chase deploys body horror even in the introduction of the article (which are written only for the print collection).

Reviewing Impossible Landscapes is in the name, at least via the traditional approach. Thomas avoids the pitfall entirely by getting appropriately weird in this anti-review. One part response to a Quinns Quest video that dropped a few weeks before, and one part intensely critical look of where and how the self fits into the constellation of egos that make a tabletop RPG actually happen. The piece feels appropriately unsettling, moving between conventional discussions of Detwiller’s adventure for Delta Green and a sardonic aping of stage plays like an automobile caroming off traffic barriers. It’s jarring (complimentary). It feels at points like someone peeling back their own skin in an attempt to better understand themself. Do I know what an anti-review is supposed to do, or even what Impossible Landscapes accomplishes? That was never the point of this deeply self-reflective exercise.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: You, Me, and the King in Yellow. The cover photo is a a masked man in gold against aging paper.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

Ravenloft joins a growing list of yet unrealized tabletop screen adaptations www.rascal.news/ravenloft-jo...

Several fantasy adventurers arrayed, weapons drawn, around a helmed figure with red eyes who holds a cowering goblin in its hands.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

Rounding out the first half of the book, Thomas' 5000-word Shadowrun extravaganza, where he talked to fans and designers about why people like to hate the game so much.

I have a long relationship with Shadowrun, having picked up the third edition way back in the ‘90s after playing the SNES video game. I remember the absolute nightmare it was to run, having to juggle multiple complex systems simultaneously. On the other hand, one of my favorite campaigns of all time was a long-term, open-ended game run by a friend of mine who had houseruled the game into a much more manageable state.

Thomas’ investigation captures the duality of Shadowrun perfectly. The depth of the rules contrasted against their impenetrability, the rich setting versus the clumsily problematic representation of Indigenous groups, and the struggles of a dedicated player base that feels their beloved game is being mismanaged by its stewards.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

In his report on how Null Signal Games radically reimagines what it takes to publish card games, Chase paints a picture of a whole new model of how games could work.

One of Chase’s standout pieces of reportage last year was this charming portrait of one of the most unique organizations in the world of trading cards and games in general. It’s a great example of how one of the most rewarding things in journalism isn’t necessarily the discovery or propagation of the news but finding people and groups who are doing good work and just telling their story. At a time, when the narratives of profit above all else seem more entrenched than ever, this account of Null Signal Games is a counterpoint. There are different ways of doing things. Community ownership is viable model. We can figure these things out. It’s inspiring.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Null Signal Games is Keeping Corporations Fictional. The cover photo is a beautiful utopic fantasy city under construction.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

She had many warm pieces but this one about D&D's starter sets in the '90s was both funny and full of questions about why some of those good ideas were lost.

Caelyn’s best ideas usually start as long posts in the Rascal work channels that reveal some previously unknown font of knowledge about old ass tabletop games, after which I will invariably respond: this should be a blog. Hence came this review of every 1990s boxed RPGs and starter sets produced by TSR for their version of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s illuminating to consider this venerable game through a very specific lens, one that is situated as much in Caelyn’s memory as in product shots and limited archival history. Every one of these were someone’s first brush with D&D, but viewing them in a sequence reveals just how prone it was to “innovation” and novelty. (VHS tapes!) So much has changed under Wizards of the Coast’s stewardship, but other aspects are distressingly, hilariously conspicuous. I want all my retro reviews to be this personal and funny.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: I review every TSR D&D Starter Set from the '90s. The cover photo is a red dragon on a black box.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

Rowan's piece about how Dimension 20's Titan Takedown got her to enjoy wrestling was one commenter's favorite piece on the site, so it had to be in the book. Lin captures what's so cool about the story:

When Rowan first said she wanted to talk about Titan Takedown – the D20 show that combined D&D with pro wrestling – I was immediately excited and nervous. I was a casual fan, more interested in the cultural value of the keyfabe than the actual sport. Rowan, as she admits in her piece, didn’t like wrestling. But in this article she tracks wrestling as a theatrical phenomenon, immediately cottoning on to the easily-drawn connections between the ring and tabletop roleplaying games. The piece explores wrestling’s cultural history in America, as well as interviewing wrestling fans involved in TTRPGs, getting Brennan Lee Mulligan to weigh in on his connection to wrestling, and all the while Rowan pens an adroitly admiring piece of criticism for actual play. This is exactly the kind of writing that actual play desperately needs.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Titan Takedown taught me to love professional wrestling. The cover photo is Brennan Lee Mulligan and the cast of Titan Takedown.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

Then, Lin's wide-ranging and delightful review of Daggerheart and how, if it's goal was to be an alternative to D&D, it's succeeded. Here's how Chase introduced the story:

Fantasy heartbreakers are named thus for a reason. Attempting to steal any of the pie dominated by Dungeons & Dragons usually ends with bitter disappointment — if the only goal is to solve or fix a perceived weakness in the RPG monolith. Many people believed Daggerheart wanted such a slice, but Lin’s earnest and well-referenced defense complicates that oversimplification. They compare Darrington Press’ latest and greatest game to the Big Ampersand as a way to both illustrate the former’s strengths and highlight pervading faults in the latter’s foundation that, over the years, have been papered over or simply accepted. Daggerheart manages to achieve more than the sum of its very generic (and sometimes problematic) parts. That is a success in itself. We must meet games where they’re at, as Lin writes, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bring an experiential lens along for the ride.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: Daggerheart does D&D better than D&D. The cover photo is an illustration of a tiefling casting a cool spell.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

First up, it's "An RPG community in Iraq takes a first step outside D&D". This is one of our most popular stories about gaming around the world. Here's the introduction from Caelyn (w/ alt text):

Thomas’ dives into local RPG scenes around the globe are, for my money, some of his finest writing, and this piece about the Board & Beyond group in Baghdad is a shining example. It demonstrates how he teases out interesting details from his subjects, ranging from local complications that a primarily Anglophone audience wouldn’t expect — such as the difficulties involved in roleplaying in Arabic — to foibles that transcend national and linguistic boundaries, like Board & Beyond’s fascinating multi-DM approach to bringing new players into the hobby.

It’s a warm piece that introduces a burgeoning community in a locale where RPGs are a relatively new pastime and leaves the reader with a sense of positivity and hope.

Screenshot of the Rascal website. The article headline is: an RPG community takes their first steps outside D&D. The cover photo is a group of Iraqi men and women in a trendy cafe playing RPGs.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 15/09/2026

This is the Table of Contents with a list of stories. We chose a mix of timeless pieces that combine big games, small games, reviews, essays, and reportage. It's a window into the site and a way to keep a small piece of it in physical space.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 14/09/2026

Talkback: Blades in the Dark/Doskvol www.rascal.news/talkback-bla...

Talkback: Blades in the Dark/Doskvol

Rascal News @rascal.news · 11/09/2026

Steve Jackson Games’ eponymous CEO steps down to focus on designing new games www.rascal.news/steve-jackso...

Steve Jackson Games’ eponymous CEO steps down to focus on designing new games

Rascal News @rascal.news · 10/09/2026

One Hundred Tales of Solidarity www.rascal.news/one-hundred-...

toy soldiers walking across a bridge, brightly coloured except for the middle strip in black and white

Rascal News @rascal.news · 09/09/2026

Blurring the lines between larp and tabletop, Nine Space Games is Jason Morningstar’s best work yet www.rascal.news/blurring-the...

Words "Nine Space Games" in white text on a purple background. A futuristic circular design in the background.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 07/09/2026

Rascal News asked for help, and y’all delivered www.rascal.news/rascal-news-...

Grey dumpster with black lid in front of an orange building. The worlds "PLAY" and "RASCAL" are spray painted on the side in black.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 07/09/2026

Rascal Year 2 anthology is now available www.rascal.news/rascal-year-...

Illustration of a massive screaming possum in a snowy woods. There are black letters in the top left, but the word is obscured by the crop

Rascal News @rascal.news · 04/09/2026

A game without players can still be played www.rascal.news/a-game-witho...

A frenetic mix of colors and images, mainly focusing on a lamprey that seems to be eating Dungeons & Dragons' first edition brown box.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 03/09/2026

In Guadalajara, kids who once photocopied game books now design RPGs and run conventions www.rascal.news/in-guadalaja...

Hugo Hernandez,a mexican man sitting behind a convention table full of games like Cy-Borg, Nuerocity, Deify, Cosmere

Rascal News @rascal.news · 01/09/2026

Finally, a healthy relationship to crowdfunding www.rascal.news/finally-a-he...

Dark black-and-white illustration of a massive alien fighting at least eight figures in space suits. It's all fleshy and monstrous, and one person is torn in half.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 01/09/2026

Reading Club: Blades in the Dark/Doskvol www.rascal.news/reading-c/

blades in the dark's cover feautirng a scoundrel with the title of the show: rascal reading club next to it

Rascal News @rascal.news · 27/08/2026

It's Both The Best And Worst Time To Get Into Pokémon Cards www.rascal.news/its-both-the...

A black binder full of Pokémon cards sitting open on a wooden table.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 26/08/2026

Products aren’t people and don’t “have to” do anything www.rascal.news/products-are...

Grid of black and white MTG cards from the Zeta Set release, their art composed of scavenged image, collage, and DIY aesthetics.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 25/08/2026

€6 million in 8 years: Larp for social good receives serious funding in Europe www.rascal.news/eur6-million...

€6 million in 8 years: Larp for social good receives serious funding in Europe

Rascal News @rascal.news · 24/08/2026

Radio Hour: Scootin' for a Mutin' www.rascal.news/radio-hour-s...

Painting of Louis XVI's execution. Four men on a guillotine, one holding up a severed head. French soldiers, horses and a carriage in the foreground.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 21/08/2026

Looters reframes treasure and dungeon crawling as class conflict www.rascal.news/looters-refr...

Several adventurers on the left are hiding behind a wall, for fear of being spotted by a menacing,mechanical bull.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 20/08/2026

AITA because I (fairy prince, 1573yo) can't stop wiping people's memories? www.rascal.news/fairy-prince...

An old master's painting that depicts three young people eating. They've turned towards the viewer with looks of derision on their faces. A cat also glares at the viewer.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 20/08/2026

AITA because I (fairy prince, 1573yo) can't stop wiping people's memories? www.rascal.news/fairy-prince...

Rascal News @rascal.news · 19/08/2026

Does winning the Diana Jones Emerging Designer award help you stand out at Gen Con? The winners say yes. www.rascal.news/does-winning...

Glaiza Champion, J Strautman, and Kodi Gonzaga posing together in different ways in the parking lot

Rascal News @rascal.news · 17/08/2026

Down Among The Dead continues to suffer from Pirate Borg’s fundamental flaws www.rascal.news/down-among-t...

an orangutan wearing a Maya-inspired mask with an Aztec skeleton in the background (image from Down Among The Dead)

Rascal News @rascal.news · 17/08/2026

Let's plan Rascal Reading Club season 2 www.rascal.news/lets-plan-ra...

Let's plan Rascal Reading Club season 2

Rascal News @rascal.news · 13/08/2026

Asher’s Ridge puts you in the writer’s room of the next big paranormal hit www.rascal.news/ashers-ridge...

An image of the cover of Asher's Ridge in the Rascal 7 template. Green fir trees foreground a yellow and orange cliffside.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 12/08/2026

Rowan, Rook and Decard workers unionize with IWGB Games Worker Union www.rascal.news/rowan-rook-a...

A wolfish humanoid wearing a headdress of scrap metal preaches to a gathered crowd. One hand is raised, while the other holds an open book.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 12/08/2026

State of the Rascal, podcast edition www.rascal.news/state-of-the...

Rascal News @rascal.news · 10/08/2026

D&D’s Gen Con keynote promises a great return from parts undefined www.rascal.news/d-ds-gen-con...

Rascal News @rascal.news · 07/08/2026

Path Apparatus tackles lifepath systems through scholarship and play www.rascal.news/path-apparat...

An illustration of several figures dressed in medieval outfits, such as knights and wizards. It's the cover of Path Appararatus.

Rascal News @rascal.news · 04/08/2026

Before larp arrived, Australians had their own brand of freeform roleplaying www.rascal.news/before-larp-...

old pages from Australian magazines and journals showcasing articles about larping

Rascal News @rascal.news · 03/08/2026

The big announcements from GenCon 2026 [with sparkling analysis] www.rascal.news/the-big-anno...

fantasy adventurers around a convention table, playing games and eating pizza

Rascal News @rascal.news · 03/08/2026

State of the Rascal: August 2026 www.rascal.news/state-of-the...